Friday, December 12, 2014

Christmas card, NYC, December, 2014.

There is a small evergreen in the churchyard of St. Paul's Chapel. Nothing much, but it stood there today on such an historic spot, in the cemetery that dates from 1766, on land that suffered two devastating city fires over the centuries, and, of course, land buried more lately under the weight of two fallen 110-story buildings that awful day in September, well, there it stood, as did I, a wee tree and me, but as it was all dressed up in lights, I felt compelled to take its picture. It obliged.
In the frame of the first photo is the tree, then the new WTC Transportation Hub by Santiago Calatrava, a few sycamore trees, the new One WTC, and the churchyard bell.
The way they all stood side by side made me happy. A new happy conversation of form and shape informing one another, informing the historic and the future, and here was I, present, a silent witness eavesdropping in the middle of it all.

I wandered through the gravestones and took the second picture. Nothing can, and this, from me, who is there five times a week, nothing can prepare one for the majesty of this new sweeping sculptural architecture. It seems impossible the way I'm sure the Brooklyn Bridge once seemed to those eyes that first fell there. And so I thought,
"My. Here, in the dead of winter, in an urban cemetery of all places, anything seems possible."